How France got so lazy
The aim of French schools isn’t to impart the wonder of learning, according to Gumbel, but to learn to endure an achingly competitive system. French children are taught to parrot, not to analyze—to memorize endless passages and vomit them out. The ones who survive get filtered out to lead the government and the private sector. The ones who don’t are ridiculed shamelessly.
Hence, Gumbel argues, there is no French Mark Zuckerberg, or Richard Branson, or Steve Jobs. Sure, there are plenty of brilliant minds in France, such as the phenomenal former finance minister Christine Lagarde, a former competitive synchronized swimmer. But Lagarde’s career was largely honed in America, and her detractors called her L’Americaine. She also left France to take up Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s former post at the International Monetary Fund…
“There is not the spirit of entrepreneurship here,” said one French management consultant who made it through the rigorous French graduate school system, worked in finance in London, and came back to Paris to raise his family. “The state system and its huge amount of administration and paperwork discourages venture capitalism.”
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I could give a crap about France. I’m worried about this country.
BierManVA on February 22, 2013 at 6:49 PM
Anyone in France with that kind of entrepreneurial spirit will move to the UK or the US.
Steven Den Beste on February 22, 2013 at 7:00 PM
The Frogs killed off most of their brains such as Lavoisier during the French Revolution. Lafayette barely escaped. Then what brains were left mostly escaped to the United States or were killed off in World War I. They were led to most military victories by a Corsican or saved by the United States’ sacrifices and Cold War expenditures.
The same can be said of Good Britain too. Most of their best and brightest died in Flanders and the Somme. Oxford and Cambridge had always been as much peerage (birthright) and who one knows rather than what one knows much like Harvard has become today.
The United States is experiencing similar decline as we pay Welfare Queens to breed indiscriminately, try to blame the victim Zimmerman instead of the hoodlum Saint Trayvon, substitute political correctness for honesty, and discourage academic achievement and job advancement through genuine merit with the deadly cancer called Affirmative-action.
viking01 on February 22, 2013 at 7:10 PM
It’s the socialism, stupid.
Atlas on February 22, 2013 at 7:16 PM
That’s somewhat the chicken or the egg dilemma.
Socialism attracts the lazy then perpetuates laziness.
viking01 on February 22, 2013 at 7:20 PM
No, Harvard has a peerage now:
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/339778/racial-quotas-harvard-and-legacy-ibakkei-ron-unz
Ron Unz has a number of interesting article on Ivy League admissions worth perusing.
With that said, you can still get a good education at Oxbridge. As for as France, you’re either an “énarque” or a peasant.
Punchenko on February 22, 2013 at 7:23 PM
I would actually contend that capitalism attracts laziness to an extent, albeit in a different manner.
A socialist is lazy, and demands someone else work in his stead.
A capitalist is lazy, and builds a machine to work for him. He then mass-produces and sells said machine, hires someone to fix them, and invests his earnings in the next guy over’s operation that’s optimizing a lubricant for his machine.
Capitalism attracts laziness, but it does not perpetuate it the way socialism does.
Atlas on February 22, 2013 at 7:27 PM